Our core focus is assisting people who are on benefits to find decent, lasting jobs. These people may be long-term unemployed. They may be people with disabilities. They include ethnic minorities and indigenous groups; parents and single parents; and disengaged youth. Many are isolated from the labour market, and many are surviving on subsistence benefits only.

We have developed specific strategies for each of these groups to give them the greatest chance to grow and achieve.

Our approach is individualized, empowering and transformative. It focuses on what a person can do rather than what they cannot. It focuses on helping people to concentrate their energies on maximizing their strengths. It is about urging, encouraging, challenging and persevering. It is about providing hope, building confidence, motivating, and encouraging people to pursue their field of fascination. For many of the long-term unemployed people we assist, this is often their first encounter with positive belief in a respectful environment that emulates a work environment. And for many, it makes the difference between a life of dependence and one of full participation through work. We have helped hundreds of thousands of long-term unemployed people into decent, lasting jobs over 23 years.

In the case of people with health conditions, we pioneered the concept of employing health professionals – physiotherapists and psychologists – to work alongside employment advisors to support clients to understand and manage their health conditions while finding and starting work. This is because we believe people are better off in work – that work provides them with an ability to make a contribution, achieve independence and flourish. By tackling employment and health issues at the same time, clients have a much better chance of finding the right jobs for them. Once in a job, we work with employers to provide advice and support on managing their new employee’s condition and adapting the workplace if necessary.

For children to thrive, their home environment needs to be stable. We work with parents and single parents to provide an understanding of how they are better off in work – not only financially, but also through the routine that work provides, and the positive example it sets for their children. Our approach includes employing parents to work with parents, welcoming children into our office environment, providing support and assistance in finding appropriate child care, and, in some instances, caring for children when parents go to job interviews.

We understand the importance of engagingyoung people in the world of work. By providing them with an appreciation of the independence and positive life choices that work brings, we can break cycles of apathy, poverty, and generational unemployment. In a time of aging population, we also understand the need to tackle youth unemployment to increase the relative numbers of young people entering the labour market.

For people from ethnic minorities, and who are refugees and migrants, the need for language skills and establishing networks is often the greatest. In addition to job search assistance, we connect these people with their local community and to providers who can enable them by providing basic language skills for work. In some areas, we provide this language training ourselves.

We are interested in developing strategies for offenders - through early intervention to enable them to enter the workforce from the moment they leave prison. This involves working with them while they are still in prison, to provide job search and skills training, motivation, confidence, an understanding they are better off in work, and a belief that they can do it. It involves engaging with employers to overcome common perceptions and achieve trust.

And we believe in the importance of specific intervention for military veterans to assist them with the unique health, emotional and integration needs that come from moving from a life in the military back to the general community.

To find out more about our programmes to assist disadvantaged people back to work, visit our global impact pages.

“Our core focus is assisting people who are on benefits to find decent, lasting jobs.”